China’s cyberattacks on Britain
A hacking group has targeted politicians and journalists critical of China. Emily Hohler reports
British and US officials on Monday accused China of launching a “prolific” global campaign of cyberattacks, targeting politicians, journalists and academics in addition to millions of voters, says Steven Swinford in The Times. London and Washington say the hacking group, Advanced Persistent Threat 31, is an arm of China’s Ministry of State Security, and has conducted a “decade-long” campaign to “repress critics, compromise government institutions and steal trade secrets”.
APT31 has allegedly compromised the personal records of millions of Americans, and last year the UK Electoral Commission revealed that Chinese hackers had accessed the data of 40 million voters. This week the UK has sanctioned two Chinese officials and one organisation, while the US has charged seven people over attacks dating back to 2010. The Chinese embassy in London described the accusations as “groundless” and said that strong “démarches” had been issued to relevant parties in Britain and the US.
Rishi Sunak said it was right to “take measures to protect ourselves”, describing China’s increasingly assertive behaviour as an “epoch-defining challenge”, while his deputy, Oliver Dowden, described the attacks as “completely unacceptable”. Tory MPs said the government’s actions did not go far enough given the scale of the threat, says Camilla Turner in The Telegraph.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, who has been sanctioned by Beijing and targeted by hackers, likened the response to an “elephant giving birth to a mouse” and compared the West’s approach to 1930s appeasement, calling for a much “tougher” response. For all the outrage, the action taken was surprisingly mild, agreed a Telegraph editorial. But then Chinese “snooping” isn’t exactly news. “The Chinese Communist Party’s tentacles are everywhere, seeking to siphon up cuttingedge technology and interfering in the democratic political processes of dozens of countries.” The question is why countries are “collectively” calling Beijing out now, and whether they will go further.
An overreaction?
A major reason for reticence is economic. China is Britain’s fifth largest trading partner, and while total imports from China decreased last year, British exports grew almost 12%. Research by Grant Thornton finds that 970 Chinese-owned firms employed more than 59,000 people in the UK last year and contributed £116.4bn in revenues to the economy. Some of China’s biggest investments in this country have been in the energy sector, specifically nuclear power, and as The Sunday Times reports, Chinese firm EVE Energy is poised to invest billions in building a giant factory on the outskirts of Coventry.
Neither MPs’ demands that Dowden “calls out China” nor the “fulminations of Duncan Smith” will have had the People’s Liberation Army “straining at the leash”, says Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. “Realpolitik is how it works.” The “fate of the Uyghurs” didn’t stop David Cameron begging for Chinese cash. China is “expanding its global influence exactly as the West once did”, and its investments have advanced its own interest but “also the lives of those it assists”.
Nothing justifies hacking emails and “international action is needed to police the darker regions of the digital universe”, but a sense of proportion remains the “hardest but most necessary quality to maintain”. The greatest threat we face is global warming. China accounts for more than 25% of greenhouse-gas emissions and Britain is involved in China’s “greening” of its Belt and Road Initiative. Collaboration with China is not about “diplomatic posturing. It is about something essential.”